The Jungle Book 4

 "Indeed," Baloo began, "I am no more than the old and  sometimes very foolish Teacher of the Law to the Seeonee wolfcubs, and Bagheera here—"

"Is Bagheera," said the Black Panther, and his jaws shut with a  snap, for he did not believe in being humble. "The trouble is  this, Kaa. Those nut-stealers and pickers of palm leaves have  stolen away our man-cub of whom thou hast perhaps heard."

"I heard some news from Ikki (his quills make him  presumptuous) of a man-thing that was entered into a wolf pack,  but I did not believe. Ikki is full of stories half  heard and very  badly told."

"But it is true. He is such a man-cub as never was," said Baloo.  "The best and wisest and boldest of man-cubs—my own pupil,  who shall make the name of Baloo famous through all the  jungles; and besides, I—we—love him, Kaa."

"Ts! Ts!" said Kaa, weaving his head to and fro. "I also have

known what love is. There are tales I could tell that—"

"That need a clear night when we are all well fed to praise  properly," said Bagheera quickly. "Our man-cub is in the hands  of the Bandar-log now, and we know that of all the Jungle-People  they fear Kaa alone."

"They fear me alone. They have good reason," said Kaa.  "Chattering, foolish, vain—vain, foolish, and chattering, are the  monkeys. But a man-thing in their hands is in no good luck.  They grow tired of the nuts they pick, and throw them down.  They carry a branch half a day, meaning to do great things with  it, and then they snap it in two. That man-thing is not to be  envied. They called me also—`yellow fish' was it not?"

"Worm—worm—earth-worm," said Bagheera, "as well as other

things which I cannot now say for shame."

"We must remind them to speak well of their master. Aaa-ssp!  We must help their wandering memories. Now, whither went  they with the cub?"

"The jungle alone knows. Toward the sunset, I believe," said

Baloo. "We had thought that thou wouldst know, Kaa."

"I? How? I take them when they come in my way, but I do not  hunt the Bandar-log, or frogs—or green scum on a water-hole,  for that matter."

"Up, Up! Up, Up! Hillo! Illo! Illo,  look up, Baloo of the

Seeonee Wolf Pack!"

Baloo looked up to see where the voice came from, and there was Rann the Kite, sweeping down with the sun shining on the upturned flanges of his wings. It was near Rann's bedtime, but he had ranged all over the jungle looking for the Bear and had missed him in the thick foliage.

"What is it?" said Baloo.

"I have seen Mowgli among the Bandar-log. He bade me tell  you. I watched. The Bandar-log have taken him beyond the river  to the monkey city—to the Cold Lairs. They may stay there for a  night, or ten nights, or an hour. I have told the bats to watch  through the dark time. That is my message. Good hunting, all  you below!"

"Full gorge and a deep sleep to you, Rann," cried Bagheera. "I  will remember thee in my next kill, and put aside the head for  thee alone, O best of kites!"

"It is nothing. It is nothing. The boy held the Master Word. I

could have done no less," and Rann circled up again to his roost.

"He has not forgotten to use his tongue," said Baloo with a chuckle of pride. "To think of one so young remembering the

Master Word for the birds too while he was being pulled across trees!"

"It was most firmly driven into him," said Bagheera. "But I am

proud of him, and now we must go to the Cold Lairs."

They all knew where that place was, but few of the Jungle  People ever went there, because what they called the Cold Lairs was an old deserted city, lost and buried in the jungle, and beasts seldom use a place that men have once used. The wild boar will, but the hunting tribes do not. Besides, the monkeys lived there as much as they could be said to live anywhere, and no self-respecting animal would come within eyeshot of it except in times of drought, when the half-ruined tanks and reservoirs held a little water.

"It is half a night's journey—at full speed," said Bagheera, and  Baloo looked very serious. "I will go as fast as I can," he said  anxiously.

"We dare not wait for thee. Follow, Baloo. We must go on the

quick-foot—Kaa and I."

"Feet or no feet, I can keep abreast of all thy four," said Kaa  shortly. Baloo made one effort to hurry, but had to sit down  panting, and so they left him to come on later, while Bagheera  hurried forward, at the quick panther-canter. Kaa said nothing,  but, strive as Bagheera might, the  huge Rock-python held level  with him. When they came to a hill stream, Bagheera gained,  because he bounded across while Kaa swam, his head and two  feet of his neck clearing the water, but on level ground Kaa  made up the distance.

"By the Broken Lock that freed me," said Bagheera, when

twilight had fallen, "thou art no slow goer!"

"I am hungry," said Kaa. "Besides, they called me speckled

frog."

"Worm—earth-worm, and yellow to boot."

"All one. Let us go on," and Kaa seemed to pour himself along  the ground, finding the shortest road with his steady eyes, and  keeping to it.

In the Cold Lairs the Monkey-People were not thinking of  Mowgli's friends at all. They had brought the boy to the Lost  City, and were very much pleased with themselves for the time.  Mowgli had never seen an Indian city before, and though this was almost a heap of ruins it seemed very wonderful and splendid. Some king had built it long ago on a little hill. You could still trace the stone causeways that led up to  the ruined gates where the last splinters of wood hung to the worn, rusted hinges. Trees had grown into and out of the walls; the battlements were tumbled down and decayed, and wild creepers hung out of the windows of the towers on the walls in bushy hanging clumps.

A great roofless palace crowned the hill, and the marble of the courtyards and the fountains was split, and stained with red and green, and the very cobblestones in the courtyard where the king's elephants used to live had been thrust up and apart by grasses and young trees. From the palace you could see the rows and rows of roofless houses that made up the city looking like empty honeycombs filled with blackness; the shapeless block of stone that had been an idol in the square where four roads  met; the pits and dimples at street corners where the public wells once stood, and the shattered domes of temples with wild figs sprouting on their sides. The monkeys called the place their city, and pretended to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in the forest. And yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them. They would sit in circles on the hall of the king's council chamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men; or they would run in and out of the roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old bricks in a corner, and forget where they had hidden them, and fight and cry in scuffling crowds, and then break off to play up and down the terraces of the king's garden, where they would shake the rose trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall.  They explored all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace

and the hundreds of little dark rooms, but they never  remembered what they had seen and what they had not; and so  drifted about in ones and twos or crowds telling each other that  they were doing as men did. They drank at the tanks and made  the water all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they  would all rush together in mobs and shout: "There is no one in  the jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as  the Bandar-log." Then all would begin again till they grew tired  of the city and went back to the tree-tops, hoping the JunglePeople would notice them.

Mowgli, who had been trained under the Law of the Jungle, did not like or understand this kind of life. The monkeys dragged him into the Cold Lairs late in the afternoon, and instead of going to sleep, as Mowgli would have done after a long journey, they joined hands and danced about and sang their foolish songs. One  of the monkeys made a speech and told his companions that Mowgli's capture marked a new thing in the history of the Bandar-log, for Mowgli was going to show them how to weave sticks and canes together as a protection against rain and cold. Mowgli picked up some creepers and began to work them in and out, and the monkeys tried to imitate; but in a very few minutes they lost interest and began to pull their friends' tails or jump up and down on all fours, coughing.

"I wish to eat," said Mowgli. "I am a stranger in this part of the jungle. Bring me food, or give me leave to hunt here."

Twenty or thirty monkeys bounded away to bring him nuts and wild pawpaws. But they fell to fighting on the road, and it was too much trouble to go back with what was left of the fruit.  Mowgli was sore and angry as well as hungry, and he roamed through the empty city giving the Strangers' Hunting Call from time to time, but no one answered him, and Mowgli felt that he had reached a very bad place indeed. "All that Baloo has said about the Bandar-log is true," he thought to himself. "They have no Law, no Hunting Call, and no leaders—nothing but foolish words and little picking thievish hands. So if I am starved or killed here, it will be all my own fault. But I must try to return

to my own jungle. Baloo will surely beat me, but that is better

than chasing silly rose leaves with the Bandar-log."

No sooner had he walked to the city wall than the monkeys pulled him back, telling him that he did not know how happy he was, and pinching  him to make him grateful. He set his teeth and said nothing, but went with the shouting monkeys to a terrace above the red sandstone reservoirs that were half-full of

rain water. There was a ruined summer-house of white marble in

the center of the terrace, built for queens dead a hundred years  ago. The domed roof had half fallen in and blocked up the  underground passage from the palace by which the queens used  to enter. But the walls were made of screens of marble tracery— beautiful milk-white fretwork, set  with agates and cornelians  and jasper and lapis lazuli, and as the moon came up behind the  hill it shone through the open work, casting shadows on the  ground like black velvet embroidery. Sore, sleepy, and hungry as  he was, Mowgli could not help laughing when the Bandar-log  began, twenty at a time, to tell him how great and wise and  strong and gentle they were, and how foolish he was to wish to  leave them. "We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We  are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so,  and so it must be true," they shouted. "Now as you are a new  listener and can carry our words back to the Jungle-People so  that they may notice us in future, we will tell you all about our  most excellent selves." Mowgli made no objection, and the  monkeys gathered by hundreds and hundreds on the terrace to  listen to their own speakers singing the praises of the Bandarlog, and whenever a speaker stopped for want of breath they  would all shout together: "This is true; we all say so." Mowgli  nodded  and blinked, and said "Yes" when they asked him a  question, and his head spun with the noise. "Tabaqui the Jackal  must have bitten all these people," he said to himself, "and now  they have madness. Certainly this is dewanee, the madness. Do  they never go to sleep? Now there is a cloud coming to cover  that moon. If it were only a big enough cloud I might try to run  away in the darkness. But I am tired."

That same cloud was being watched by two good friends in the ruined ditch below the city wall, for Bagheera and Kaa, knowing well how dangerous the Monkey-People were in large numbers, did not wish to run any risks. The monkeys never fight unless they are a hundred to one, and few in the jungle care for those odds.

"I will go to the west wall," Kaa whispered, "and come down  swiftly with the slope of the ground in my favor. They will not  throw themselves upon my back in their hundreds, but—"

"I know it," said Bagheera. "Would that Baloo were here, but

we must do what we can. When that cloud covers the moon I shall go to the terrace. They hold some sort of council there over

the boy."

"Good hunting," said Kaa grimly, and glided away to the west  wall. That happened to be the least ruined of any, and the big  snake was delayed awhile before he could find a way up the  stones. The cloud hid the moon, and as Mowgli wondered what  would come next he heard Bagheera's light feet on the terrace.  The Black Panther had raced up the slope almost without a  sound and was striking—he knew better than to waste time in  biting—right and left among the monkeys, who were seated  round Mowgli in circles fifty and sixty deep. There was a howl  of fright and rage, and then as Bagheera tripped on the rolling  kicking bodies beneath him, a monkey shouted: "There is only  one here! Kill him! Kill." A scuffling mass of monkeys, biting,  scratching, tearing, and pulling, closed over Bagheera, while five  or six laid hold of Mowgli, dragged him up the wall of the  summerhouse and pushed him through the hole of the broken  dome. A man-trained boy would have been badly bruised, for  the fall was a good fifteen feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo had  taught him to fall, and landed on his feet.

"Stay there," shouted the monkeys, "till we have killed thy  friends, and later we will play with thee—if the Poison-People  leave thee alive."

"We be of one blood, ye and I," said Mowgli, quickly giving the  Snake's Call. He could hear rustling and hissing in the rubbish  all round him and gave the Call a second time, to make sure.

"Even ssso! Down hoods all!" said half a  dozen low voices

(every ruin in India becomes sooner or later a dwelling place of  snakes, and the old summerhouse was alive with cobras). "Stand still, Little Brother, for thy feet may do us harm."

Mowgli stood as quietly as he could, peering through the  open work and listening to the furious din of the fight round the Black  Panther—the yells and chatterings and scufflings, and Bagheera's deep, hoarse cough as he backed and bucked and twisted and plunged under the heaps of his enemies. For the first time since he was born, Bagheera was fighting for his life.

"Baloo must be at hand; Bagheera would not have come  alone," Mowgli thought. And then he called aloud: "To the tank,  Bagheera. Roll to the water tanks. Roll and plunge! Get to the  water!"

Bagheera heard, and the cry that told him Mowgli was safe gave him new courage. He worked his way desperately, inch by inch, straight for the reservoirs, halting in silence. Then from the ruined wall nearest the jungle rose up the rumbling war-shout of  Baloo. The old  Bear had done his best, but he could not come before. "Bagheera," he shouted, "I am here. I climb! I haste!  Ahuwora! The stones slip under my feet! Wait my coming, O most infamous Bandar-log!" He panted up the terrace only to disappear to the head in a wave of monkeys, but he threw himself squarely on his haunches, and, spreading out his forepaws, hugged as many as he could hold, and then began to hit with a regular bat-bat-bat, like the flipping strokes of a paddle wheel. A crash and a splash told Mowgli that Bagheera had fought his way to the tank where the monkeys could not follow. The Panther lay gasping for breath, his head just out of the water, while the monkeys stood three deep on the red steps, dancing up and down with rage, ready to spring upon him from all sides if he came out to help Baloo. It was then that Bagheera lifted up his dripping chin, and in despair gave the Snake's Call

for protection—"We be of one blood, ye and I"—for he believed  that Kaa had turned tail at the last minute. Even Baloo, half smothered under the monkeys on the edge of the terrace, could  not help chuckling as he heard the Black Panther asking for  help.

Kaa had only just worked his way over the west wall, landing with a wrench that dislodged a coping stone into the ditch.  He had no intention of losing any advantage of the ground, and coiled and uncoiled himself once or twice, to be sure that every foot of his long body was in working order. All that while the fight with Baloo went on, and the monkeys yelled in the tank

round Bagheera, and Mang the Bat, flying to and fro, carried the  news of the great battle over the jungle, till even Hathi the Wild  Elephant trumpeted, and, far away, scattered bands of the  Monkey-Folk woke and came leaping along the tree-roads to help  their comrades in the Cold Lairs, and the noise of the fight  roused all the day birds for miles round. Then Kaa came  straight, quickly, and anxious to kill. The fighting strength of a  python is in the driving blow of his head backed by all the  strength and weight of his body. If you can imagine a lance, or a  battering ram, or a hammer weighing nearly half a ton driven by  a cool, quiet mind living in the handle of it, you can roughly  imagine what Kaa was like when he fought. A python four or  five feet long can knock a man down if he hits him fairly in the  chest, and Kaa was thirty feet long, as you know. His first stroke  was delivered into the heart of the crowd round Baloo. It was

sent home with shut mouth in silence, and there was no need of  a second. The monkeys  scattered with cries of—"Kaa! It is Kaa!  Run! Run!"

Generations of monkeys had been scared into good behavior by the stories their elders told them of Kaa, the night thief, who could slip along the branches as quietly as moss grows, and steal away the strongest monkey that ever lived; of old Kaa, who could make himself look so like a dead branch or a rotten stump that the wisest were deceived, till the branch caught them. Kaa was everything that the monkeys feared in the jungle, for none of them knew the limits of his power, none of them could look

him in the face, and none had ever come alive out of his hug.  And so they ran, stammering with terror, to the walls and the  roofs of the houses, and Baloo drew a deep breath of relief. His  fur was much thicker than Bagheera's, but he had suffered sorely  in the fight. Then Kaa opened his mouth for the first time and  spoke one long hissing word, and the far-away monkeys,  hurrying to the defense of the Cold Lairs, stayed where they  were, cowering, till the loaded branches bent and crackled under  them. The monkeys on the walls and the empty houses stopped  their cries, and in the stillness that fell upon the city Mowgli  heard Bagheera shaking his wet sides as he came up from the  tank. Then the clamor broke out again. The monkeys leaped  higher up the walls. They clung around the necks of the big  stone idols and shrieked as they skipped along the battlements,  while Mowgli, dancing in the summerhouse, put his eye to the  screenwork and hooted owl-fashion between his front teeth, to

show his derision and contempt.

"Get the man-cub out of that trap; I can do no more,"  Bagheera gasped. "Let us take the man-cub and go. They may  attack again."

"They will not move till I order them. Stay you sssso!" Kaa  hissed, and the city was silent once more. "I could not come  before, Brother, but I think I heard thee call"—this was to  Bagheera.

"I—I may have cried out in the battle," Bagheera answered.

"Baloo, art thou hurt?

"I am not sure that they did not pull me into a hundred little  bearlings," said Baloo, gravely shaking one leg after the other.  "Wow! I am sore. Kaa, we owe thee, I think, our lives—Bagheera  and I."

"No matter. Where is the manling?"

"Here, in a trap. I cannot climb out," cried Mowgli. The curve of the broken dome was above his head.

"Take him away. He dances like Mao the Peacock. He will

crush our young," said the cobras inside.

"Hah!" said Kaa with a chuckle, "he has friends everywhere,  this manling. Stand back, manling. And hide you, O Poison  People. I break  down the wall."

Kaa looked carefully till he found a discolored crack in the marble tracery showing a weak spot, made two or three light taps with his head to get the distance, and then lifting up six feet of his body clear of the ground, sent home half a dozen full-power smashing blows, nose-first. The screen-work broke and fell away in a cloud of dust and rubbish, and Mowgli leaped through the opening and flung himself between Baloo and  Bagheera—an arm around each big neck.

"Art thou hurt?" said Baloo,  hugging him softly.

"I am sore, hungry, and not a little bruised. But, oh, they have

handled ye grievously, my Brothers! Ye bleed."

"Others also," said Bagheera, licking his lips and looking at the

monkey-dead on the terrace and round the tank.

"It is nothing, it is nothing, if thou art safe, oh, my pride of all

little frogs!" whimpered Baloo.

"Of that we shall judge later," said Bagheera, in a dry voice  that Mowgli did not at all like. "But here is Kaa to whom we owe  the battle and thou owest thy life. Thank him according to our  customs, Mowgli."

Mowgli turned and saw the great Python's head swaying a foot

above his own.

"So this is the manling," said Kaa. "Very soft is his skin, and  he is not unlike the Bandar-log. Have a care, manling, that I do  not mistake thee for a monkey some twilight when I have newly  changed my coat."